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Daimler acquires full control of Mercedes AMG F1 team

November 20, 2012

Mercedes driver Michael Schumacher makes the turn at the top of the turn one hill at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Daimler AG, the German automotive group the owns Mercedes-Benz, has secured full ownership of the English-based Mercedes AMG Formula One team by purchasing the 40-percent shareholding that had been held by Aabar Investments, the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi.

The stake was included when, in 2009, Aabar purchased a nine-percent shareholding in Daimler concurrently with the manufacturer's acquisition of the championship-winning Brawn Grand Prix operation in Brackley, Oxfordshire. Aabar has recently been scaling back that investment, and has now sold its remaining three-percent stake in the manufacturer.

A statement by International Petroleum Investment, Aabar's parent company, did not disclose financial terms of the deal, which is technically subject to approval by the European Union antitrust authorities.

Mercedes AMG F1 is understood to have signed the new edition of the Concorde Agreement—F1's governing document—thereby committing itself to F1 through 2020. The team recently signed former world champion Lewis Hamilton on a three-year-deal worth a reported £45 million (approximately $72 million). However, Daimler's CEO, Dieter Zetsche, last week told Die Zeit, a German weekly, “[The F1 team] certainly must become better quickly, but we do not plan to increase our budget.”

The team's 2012 budget has been estimated at $200 million.

Last month, Daimler issued a profits warning, stating that it would miss its earnings forecast this year by about e1 billion ($1.27 billion) due to the slump in the western European passenger-car market.